


A silent ringing in your skull

by towardsmorning



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Community: yj_anon_meme, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-22
Updated: 2011-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-14 23:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>(Prompt: Has anyone read Biopsychology (http://ljs-lj.livejournal.com/365917.html)? It's movie!verse Superman, but I really love the idea behind it. I'd love to see someone use the Kryptonian-bonding idea in a fic about Superman and Superboy. Maybe Superman freaks out and that's why he reacted so badly?)</i></p><p>"He has strange dreams on the few occasions he sleeps; impressions of something heady weighing on his mind, of enclosed spaces and light filtering through red walls."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A silent ringing in your skull

Clark doesn't know what it even is the first time he feels it. He's in a League meeting and it's like a tiny miniature bulb just flicks on in his mind, a small but glaring little light that doesn't stay on for long but is impossible to ignore nonetheless. He blinks stars out of his sight sharply and realizes that he hasn't been paying attention with an uncomfortable jolt.

He swears Batman is looking at him suspiciously from underneath the cowl, but Bruce is inscrutable when he feels _generous_ so Clark can't be sure.

The meeting continues, and Clark keeps waiting to see if another flash comes, but it doesn't and he eventually puts it down to not getting enough rest.

*

Except a couple more flashes crop up over the next four months. They're much more subdued than the first two and, he thinks, overlaid with something else, almost like a signal obfuscating it. He has strange dreams on the few occasions he sleeps; impressions of something heady weighing on his mind, of enclosed spaces and light filtering through red walls.

After some deliberation he goes to J'onn. The risk that something dangerous is influencing his mind is too great to ignore, but J'onn doesn't find anything concrete. Which mostly means that Clark is free to keep worrying, so he's not sure that's actually a good thing.

*

Meeting his clone ( _Superboy_ , his mind supplies, except that just feels wrong) is like a minature supernova in his head. This time the feeling is sticking around and it's...

He's heard people talk about not knowing they that they were missing something until it was there in front of them. He doesn't know that he'd say this was something he'd been _missing_ , but all of a sudden a lot of things which he'd felt _wrong_ about over the course of his life made sense. Well, not _sense_ because there was a _clone_ of him not three metres away and nothing about that made _sense_ , but he had an inkling of what had been going on with the frustration he'd felt at certain times. Times as a child when he'd suddenly get the feeling as he hugged Ma goodnight that there was something else that should have gone along with that, times that speaking with Lana would leave him with the sensation of some kind of hole between them.

Clark can't see the clone, but he still knows exactly where he's standing. It's... discomfiting.

(It says to him, _home_. But he already has home. _This_ is his home, he was raised here if not born and he doesn't want that to be taken away.)

He tells J'onn while Batman is busy intimidating the kids into explaining just what has happened. The other man seems quietly relieved like _oh, is that all, a psychic connection with your clone, that's fine._ Diana overhears and she's upset he didn't bring it up to the rest of the League but she understands as well as anyone the awkwardness in reminding people of the fact you're... not really from around here, so to speak.

"You should go and tell him," she insists, "It may be important."

Clark doesn't, because being closer just makes it worse.

Flying off makes him feel like a coward.

*

Proximity makes it worse but separation, Clark discovers, doesn't do the reverse so much.

His dreams don't change. At first he can't work out why this is unexpected, until he realises that this means Superboy is _still_ dreaming of Cadmus. Having nightmares? It's hard to say. There isn't really a sense of true fear during the dreams. Resentment, maybe. A feeling of familiarity, not so far from the uncomfortable one Superboy gives him.

Eventually, he tags along with Batman and Flash on a trip to the kids' base. Once he's over the threshold the feeling is a steady burr at the base of his skull and he resists the temptation to rub it.

While Bruce makes a beeline for Dick and Flash makes a show of including everybody else, Clark hangs back. Superboy is nearby and he has a sneaking suspicion that if he wants to talk to the younger boy- the clone- _Superboy_ , then he'll have to make the first move this time.

He wanders in the halls for a while, delaying, until he finally goes to the door of the room his skull tugs him towards. It's open and he sees Superboy look up as he arrives, shock on his face for a few moments before he struggles to cover it up.

The inherent awkwardness of the situation is just made so much worse by the not good, not bad, just _there_ feeling that he can practically feel linking them.

He opens his mouth to speak but to his surprise, Superboy gets there first.

"M'gann said that... there's this thing," the boy says, slowly, deliberately, trying to find the words. He gestures impatiently between them, yet almost cautiously, like he's worried any sudden moves will frighten Clark off. The idea almost makes Clark wince and fold on the spot.

"J'onn is- looking into it. I thought that-" he pulls himself up, _don't be Clark, be Superman, Clark is too human to talk about **this**_ "-have you been feeling anything strange?"

"I don't know," is the snapped answer. Superboy doesn't have much of a frame of reference, he supposes.

"Well if anything happens, tell... someone," he finishes. The other boy looks disappointed, and it's enough to make him add without thinking, "-they can pass it along to me."

He feels a little glow of warmth mixed in with the rapidly-quieting buzz, just for a moment.

*

He manages to push it to the back of his mind quite successfully for a month. It becomes easier and easier to ignore, though the buzzing comes back in full force before long.

But then one day at the Planet, he feels something _pull_ on it, once then twice and then continuously. It _hurts_ and before long he finds he's slumped over his desk, trying hard not to alert anybody to the fact it feels like he's having the brain's equivalent of a heart attack.

He's out of the door before he really knows what he's doing, but Clark _thinks_ he did it at normal speed, so it should be OK. Well, not OK, because Perry will have his head on a silver platter, but he'll make up some excuse. One Lois won't laugh at _much._

By the time Clark reaches the kids' base, the pain is starting to subside. He realises he's been breathing harshly and steadies himself as he walks in, consciously straightening his shoulders.

Miss Martian greets him almost immediately, and she looks worried. "Superman! Oh, um, I- that is-"

 _M'gann said that... there's this thing,_ Clark's mind echoes back at him, and he has an idea of where this is going now.

She wrings her hands as he's thinking and then seems to come to a decision. "Did you come to see Superboy? He's... in his room," she says, still hesitant but a little less so.

Clark nods, and he knows where Superboy's room is now, so he doesn't really _need_ to follow the tugging. He finds he still does, though.

Superboy is waiting for him. It's written in every line of his body, tensed like a coiled cat waiting to be hauled off for doing something wrong. His hand is on his neck, his skull, trying to rub away until he can get _inside_ to rub where it _really_ hurts.

Superman doesn't waste time awkwardly waiting. "Next time, some warning would be appreciated."

Superboy stays silent. It probably isn't supposed to, but it's parsing as 'sullen' to Superman's eye. Had he ever looked like this? He supposes he probably did. The thought unsettles him a little. Superboy has his face, and he's coming to a point where this is close to something he's able to cope with, but shared experiences are an unnerving prospect in a way he can't quite name and quantify.

He pushes the thought aside and shakes his head. "We don't know what this... is," _bond, connection?_ "-and until we do, we shouldn't be trying to alter it. No disrespect to Miss Martian, but she doesn't have the experience to try that kind of thing yet, let alone with only one of us here."

Superboy shrugs. "I thought... you seemed to want it gone."

Superman opens his mouth to say something like _yes, but we need to be careful,_ but pauses. _Clark_ pauses.

Superboy is his clone. Superboy wears his face with expressions that don't fit, wields his voice with a violence that unnerves him, tenses in ways his own body doesn't know or understand. Superboy pulls at his mind in directions that hurt.

But Superboy also had that moment last time when it went quiet and a little warm. That had been-

(Superman can't have, won't have children.)

-nice.

"Well. I don't see why we should... rush into anything. We don't even know what 'it' is yet."

Superman sits down, and looks Superboy in the eye, and almost doesn't wince at the similarity of colour.

"Perhaps... we should change that."

'Hope' is a lovely thing to feel when filtered through someone else, Clark discovers.


End file.
